Governor Quinn signs budget

Illinois will have a budget in place when the state's new fiscal year begins Tuesday. The governor signed it into law Monday.

He left much of the plan approved by Democratic legislators intact with a couple of exceptions meant to play well with voters.

It's not the budget Governor Pat Quinn wanted. He advocated for making permanent Illinois' 5-percent income tax, rather than allowing it to rollback in January.

Instead, the new budget lets that happen which means there's an approximately $2 billion drop-off in revenue.

Legislators paved that over with short-term solutions, in order to prevent drastic cuts in an election year.

Though Quinn has called it "incomplete," he's going along with it. He didn't cut a single penny from the operating budget.

Instead, the Democratic governor used his veto power to take out a small fraction of the billions of dollars Illinois is continually spending on construction projects: $250 million set aside to pay for renovations on the Statehouse.

Construction at the Capitol caused a controversy last year, like over $670,000 spent on copper-doors, and expensive chandeliers and custom carpets.

In a statement, Quinn's office wrote that Illinois "cannot afford to move forward with additional renovations." A call to the capitol architect has not been returned.